Juliantina - Nightmare
by CilverFur
Summary: Weeks afterwards, Juliana is still processing what happened when she was kidnapped. Stuck in her old ways of distrust and suspicion, she bottles up her feelings until they are unbearable. In a world so full of rejection and disappointment, will she be able to open up to the one person who might actually be able to help? Some Spanish (we love that Spanglish dialogue)


**AN: What's up, readers? I recently discovered Juliantina and have become somewhat obsessed with the relationship between these characters (which has presented quite a problem in the middle of finals season to be honest). I thought AAM did a phenomenal job bringing these characters to life and making them feel realistic in a setting that could get pretty ridiculous at times, but I thought they fell slightly short of perfection when dealing with the fallout from Juliana's kidnapping. Or not dealing with it I should say, since everyone kind of just shifted focus to Lucho and seemed to forget(?) that Juliana was almost just murdered by a drug cartel. But anyway, this story is an attempt to deal with that a bit better.**

**Set right at the end of the show, before the two year jump.**

**I don't anything. If I did we'd already have a spin off.**

**Thanks for reading!**

**PS. To any native Spanish speakers reading, if any of the Spanish in here is wrong (bad phrasing, missing accents, incorrect tenses or genders) let me know and I'll fix it! There's only so much a girl can do with two years of high school Spanish and the notoriously unreliable Google Translate. **

...

Juliana was awake. She lay in bed, the blankets pulled up to her armpits, and stared at the ceiling. It was late, the time of night when silence weighed heavy on the world and time flowed in continuum. Moments passed in monotony and only the hands of the clock cared to keep track. Juliana took in a deep breath as she stared up. A piece of the paint on the ceiling had chipped off, revealing a spot of dark color underneath. Juliana had been staring at that spot for hours. Staring but not seeing. Exhaustion had seeped through her limbs, numbing them beyond awareness. She lay in a stupor so close to sleep, the cyclic rise and fall of her chest and the occasional blink were all that distinguished her from a corpse. Was this what it felt like to be dead? She could barely register her own body. Vaguely she was aware of the aching in her eyes, the dryness of her throat, the pounding of her head, but the feelings came to her slow and dim. She took a deep breath in and closed her eyes. There, in the darkness behind her lids, she tried to coax herself to sleep. She gave in to the weight of her limbs, feeling herself falling backwards towards unawareness, she longed for its sweet release.

_Gasoline_. It burned in her nose, in her eyes, in the scrapes on her hands. There was poison in her mouth, poison and blood and salt, and they stung her throat raw as she tried to speak. To plead. To cry out and scream in pain. Because pain was everywhere. Her wrists, her mouth, her head, her stomach ached and churned and pounded with blood. Her heart was beating violently against her chest, so fast it hurt to breath, so fast she thought it might explode within her. _Prende la parilla._ No, please. _Éste va a gritar peor que un cerdo._ Help me, please! Gasoline, burning, tears clogging her throat, I can't breath, I can't scream. Somebody help me, _I don't want to die here._

Juliana opened her eyes and breathed out into the still room. She swallowed against the lump in her throat. How long had it been since the kidnapping? Weeks? A month? How long had it been since she had slept well? Had she ever? Yes. Once. Months ago she had been warm, lying in the arms of someone she loved. Her skin so soft, her smell so sweet, her touch so careful and tender. Juliana closed her eyes again and inhaled. Into the dark air she breathed out the name, _Valentina._ A warm haven in the storm, a brilliant beam in the fog, an incredulous persistence of goodness and purity in world so strife with wrongs, laughter like ringing bells, eyes as blue as the sky, safety, comfort, love, light. _Te quiero._ Juliana started to drift off again. _Te quiero, mucho._ Her mind went quiet.

_Gasoline._

Juliana bolted upright, clutching her shoulders, squeezing herself into a tight ball. She felt like crying. This was impossible. All this anxiety, this fear, this stress, it was unsustainable. She was going to break. She was going to shatter into a million pieces all over the floor. Never in her life had she felt like this, so fragile. She needed help and she knew it. She craved it. In her mind, she screamed for it. But for some reason, whenever Valentina held her face and looked into her eyes and asked if she was okay, Juliana's voice failed her. How could I ask you for anything, _mi amor_? You, who has been through so much, who has shouldered so much pain. How could I ever give you more? And so Juliana kept quiet during the day, and silenced her fears with smiles and laughter and long, gentle kisses. And when she was with Valentina it was easy to pretend that she was okay. Valentina made her okay. But at night, alone in her room with nothing but silence ringing in her ears, Juliana just stared at the ceiling and relieved her own death. _Ayudame,_ she whispered in the dark. _Por favor, alguien_…

A memory came to her mind. A car ride with Valentina the morning after her mother had been kidnapped. She could remember the desperation and panic she had felt on that day, she could still feel the thick knot of worry that had twisted her stomach. All she had wanted to do was run and hide away. She wanted to disappear in some dark corner of her mind and push everyone away until it stopped hurting. That was how she had always dealt with her problems, alone. ¡_Déjate querer, por favor, Juliana!_ Just let yourself be loved. It felt like months since Valentina had yelled those words. A lifetime had passed since she had forced her way through all of Juliana's walls and made her feel, for the first time in her life, like she wasn't completely alone.

Before she could stop and second guess herself, Juliana reached across her night table and grabbed her phone. In a frenzy of quick, jerky keystrokes she clicked on her contacts, typed Valentina's name, and tapped the call button. She put the phone to her ear and waited with shaky breath as it rang. And rang. And rang. _Soy un idiota_. Of course Val wasn't going to pick up, it was the middle of the night. She hung up the call before the answering message could play and groaned into her hands. Why was it always like this? Why was it so hard to reach out? Why did she keep everything bottled up inside when there were people who wanted to help and then scream it to the heavens when she was all alone? Juliana knew the answer to those questions well enough: El Chino Vald_é_s. Because of him, vulnerability of any kind had been discouraged from a young age. It had only ever brought more pain, it had only ever made her father's rage and rejection cut deeper. After a while she had learned to just stop trying, she built up apathy like walls around her, and used every rejection as reinforcement. Why should she care about people? People had never cared about her.

But slowly Valentina had showed her that it didn't have to be that way. That opening herself up to someone might bring joy instead of pain. And it was a joy that she had never felt before. It was pure, unguarded, and it made her feel whole. It was love. But it was only for a moment before the world came crashing down. When Lucho found out, it was the beginning of the end. What had once been pure and private was tainted by judgement. It became a source of unbearable stress and Juliana had been weak. She had taken the easy way out; she had retreated behind her walls, like always. Maybe it was a good thing. With all the chaos that ensued after they broke up, the hostage situations and kidnappings, transmigrating souls and death around every corner, maybe it was good that Juliana had been guarded. Maybe it had helped her survive. But maybe, she thought, closing her eyes and hugging her knees to her chest, maybe Valentina could have done that too.

Sitting in bed now, reflecting on everything that had happened, Juliana wondered if it would ever be the same as it was in the beginning. Valentina had confessed her love to the entire world on television just days ago and Juliana had hoped that that would be enough. But even as she held Valentina in her arms and kissed her with a freedom that they'd never had before, she knew something was wrong. Something was closed between them and they felt it in every kiss that ended a moment too soon and every look that Juliana turned from. The walls that had protected Juliana as the world crumbled around her now separated her from the only truly safe place she had ever known. She thought about her nightmares, her inability to sleep, the ghost of Alacrán's breath that she could still feel on her skin at night. She thought about everything she would say if only she had the strength. _Perdóname Val._ She whispered. _Estoy roto_. I'm broken.

Her phone rang.

Juliana jumped at the sound after so long in silence. In a scramble, she grabbed her phone and stared at the caller ID numbly. It rang again and Juliana shook herself to answer.

"Val?"

"¿_Juliana_, _está todo bien_?" Valentina's voice was low and muffled, as if she'd just woken up. "I heard my phone go off and when I saw that it was you I got concerned. _¿__Estás bien? __¿__Que pasó?_"

"_S__í__, s__í__._ _Todo estás bien. No te preocupes, Val_. _Estoy…_" She trailed off. What was she doing? Everything wasn't okay. Not two minutes ago she was having a panic attack and crying out for help. Now Valentina was literally calling out to her, offering to listen, was she really about to waste this opportunity?

"Juls? What's going on? _¿Juliana, estás ahí?_"

"_Lo siento, Val._" Juliana whispered. "_Lo siento por todo._"

"_¿Qué?_ I don't understand."

"_Val, no estoy bien_. I haven't been okay for a long time. I think I'm going crazy." Juliana's voice trembled.

"Talk to me, _mi amor_. What's going on?"

Juliana took a deep, shaky breath in. "Val, do you remember when I was taken by Alacrán?"

There was a pause. "_S__í__, claro_. I'll never forget it."

"Well, I can't stop thinking about it. Every time I close my eyes I'm back _en esa casa_. It's so real, Val." Tears stung at her eyes as she clutched the phone. "Every night it's like I'm relieving it all again. And I can-" Her voice broke. "I can feel his hands on me again and I can smell the gasoline like it's still on me and…" She was right on the brink of sobbing. Tears streamed down her face and she tried to regain control of her breathing. On the other end of the line, it sounded like Valentina was crying too. "...and I'm so afraid."

"_Juls…_" Valentina's voice was wet with tears.

"I haven't slept in weeks, Val. _Estoy muy cansada._"

"Why didn't you tell me? All this time _y tú nunca... perdón. Juliana, lo siento._ I've been so caught up in… _estoy ciego_, I should've seen-"

"_No, Val, escúchame._ It's not your fault. You didn't know because I didn't tell you. I was afraid, I didn't want to cause you more pain but all I did was hurt us both more."

"_Voy a ir allí_."

"_¿Qué? No. _It's too late, stay where you are."

"_¿Estas loca?_ I can't leave you alone like this. I need to be there, Juliana. I need to be with you."

"Val, it's three in the morning. How are you even going to get here?"

"_No sé_. I'll wake up Alirio or someone else, _no es importante._"

"_Espere, Val. Por favor, escúchame_. _Tu estas conmigo_. You're right here with me just like I'm there with you. That's enough."

There was a pause. "I don't want you to be alone," she said.

"I'm not alone. Not anymore. _Por favor Val_, just talk with me for while, okay? Tell me a story."

"_¿De qué?"_

"_No sé. _Something that makes you happy. Tell me about your dad."

"_¿Mi papá? … Bien_, okay. I could tell you about the trip we took to Canada a long time ago. It was when we were all really young, when my mom was still alive."

"_S__í, por favor_. I want to hear it."

"_Bien…. Entonces_, _probablemente tenía siete u ocho años en el momento y un día mi papá llegó a casa del trabajo y nos dijo que empacáramos nuestras maletas..._"

As Valentina spoke, Juliana laid her head back down on her pillow. She pulled the covers around her and closed her eyes, letting Valentina's voice soothe her. As she sunk deeper into the mattress, her mind began to quiet. Slowly, the tension in her limbs subsided, the pounding in her head stopped, and the knot in her stomach unwound. She felt herself falling backwards into warm oblivion, gentle unawareness. At long last, she drifted off to sleep.

When she awoke the next morning, well rested for the first time in weeks, she was no longer alone. Valentina's arms were wrapped around her, her face was pressed against her hair. Juliana could feel her breath, warm and even against her neck. She smiled and fitted herself better against the curve of Valentina's body. For the first time in a long time, she felt safe.

_Fin._


End file.
